Celebrating 20 years of Lyn McConchie’s stories

Lyn McConchie and ThunderThe 2011 Australian National Convention (Swancon Thirty Six | Natcon Fifty) will be held only a few weeks after the 20th anniversary of Lyn McConchie’s first professionally published short story, “The Sar Shan Kelpie” which appeared in the March 1991 issue of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.

Since then, Lyn has published at least 23 books in various genres (mainly fantasy), with more books under contract, and I’ve lost count of how many hundred short stories. She’s won awards. But with all that, she doesn’t earn a lot of money from her writing, so travelling abroad is financially difficult.

You all know I’m a big fan of Lyn’s, as well as a personal friend. The Swancon Thirty Six | Natcon Fifty committee has announced that Lyn is one of their invited guests. With Lyn’s permission, I administered a special fund to pay for her airfare and accommodation.

Unfortunately, we did not raise enough money, so Lyn was unable to attend Swancon. (I suspect that with the Christchurch earthquakes, the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, and various other disasters, that people gave what they could to those more urgent and important causes.)

On the good news side: Lyn was able to attend the New Zealand Natcon, ConText, in June 2011, where she won two Sir Julius Vogel awards for her fiction: Best Novel for The Questing Road and Best YA Novel for Summer of Dreaming.

Lyn’s official website is here.

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